Msian Cow Now Wanna Act Blur on Organ Trade!

[makapaaa]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Jan 11, 2009
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Khaw mum on organ donor <!--10 min-->
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Jamie Ee Wen Wei
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Mr Tang's court case last year sparked a public debate about letting organ donors receive compensation. -- LIANHE ZAOBAO FILE PHOTO
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->HEALTH Minister Khaw Boon Wan says he is glad that former C.K. Tang boss Tang Wee Sung has a new kidney and wishes him well.
He did not, however, confirm if Mr Tang, 56, had received the kidney of triad leader Tan Chor Jin, dubbed the One-Eyed Dragon, who was hanged at Changi Prison last Friday.
Mr Tang, who was jailed for a day and fined $17,000 for trying to buy a kidney for transplant last year, received a new organ at the National University Hospital last Friday.
The Straits Times yesterday reported that it is believed Mr Tang received Tan's kidney.
Responding to reporters' queries on the sidelines of a seminar organised by the Speak Mandarin Campaign, the minister said: 'I think we leave it to the patient and the family of the late Mr Tan to confirm or refute whether there was this directed transplant. I think for patient privacy, I cannot comment more than that.'
But he did say that he was happy 'about both outcomes'.
'I'm glad that Mr Tang was finally able to get a successful transplant and we wish him well. And, on the other hand, the late Mr Tan of course has paid for his crime.'
He added: 'By his own act of donating his own body parts to save whichever life that can be saved, I think that's a very praiseworthy act on the part of the late Mr Tan, and I think that should be commended.'
Tan, 42, who was blind in his right eye, was convicted in May 2007 of firing six rounds from a Beretta pistol at nightclub owner Lim Hock Soon, 40, in 2006.
He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His appeal to the President for clemency was rejected two weeks ago.
When queried, Mr Khaw said that under the current Human Organ Transplant Act (Hota), it is permissible for a donor to dictate the recipient of his organ.
'If he made the decision while he was alive, he has absolutely the right to do so.'
Mr Tang's court case last year sparked a huge public debate, which led to moves to change Hota to allow living organ donors to get monetary compensation from the recipient or a voluntary organisation.
The Sunday Times understands that the four-week public consultation on the amendments, which started in November last year, has been concluded and its results will be announced soon. Besides the compensation, another proposed change to Hota is to lift the current age limit of 60 for cadaveric donation for donors and recipients.

 

[Watchman]

China’s hi-tech ‘death van’ where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold on black market

Andrew Malone
UK Daily Mail
Saturday, March 28, 2009

Death will come soon for Jiang Yong. A corrupt local planning official with a taste for the high life, Yong solicited money from businessmen eager to expand in China’s economic boom.

Showering gifts on his mistress, known as Madam Tang, the unmarried official took more than £1 million in bribes from entrepreneurs wanting permission to build skyscrapers on land which had previously been protected from development.

But Yong, a portly, bespectacled figure, was caught by the Chinese authorities during a purge on corrupt local officials last year.

He confessed and was sentenced to death. China executed 1,715 people last year, so one more death would hardly be remarkable.

Disguised: The execution vehicle looks like a normal police van

But there will be nothing ordinary about Yong’s death by lethal injection. Unless he wins an appeal, he will draw his final breath strapped inside a vehicle that has been specially developed to make executions more cost-effective and efficient.

In chilling echoes of the ‘gas-wagon’ project pioneered by the Nazis to slaughter criminals, the mentally ill and Jews, this former member of the China People’s Party will be handcuffed to a so-called ‘humane’ bed and executed inside a gleaming new, hi-tech, mobile ‘death van.’

After trials of the mobile execution service were launched quietly three years ago - then hushed up to prevent an international row about the abuse of human rights before the Olympics last summer - these vehicles are now being deployed across China.

The number of executions is expected to rise to a staggering 10,000 people this year (not an impossible figure given that at least 68 crimes - including tax evasion and fraud - are punishable by death in China).

Developed by Jinguan Auto, which also makes bullet-proof limousines for the new rich in this vast country of 1.3 billion people, the vans appear unremarkable.

They cost £60,000, can reach top speeds of 80mph and look like a police vehicle on patrol. Inside, however, the ‘death vans’ look more like operating theatres.